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Monthly Archives: March 2016

(This is for the Slice of Life challenge for March, hosted by Two Writing Teachers. We are writing each day about the small moments in the larger perspective … or is that the larger perspective in the smaller moments? You write, too.)

I was not part of this project. Our art teacher and a visiting artist worked with students in our school to create this amazing mosaic project on the theme of “create” and “imagine” and it hangs right outside my classroom right now. I am one lucky teacher.

Every time I wander by, I see stories emerging from the tiles of this mosaic. Students in the upper grades worked during a week on this, designing the images and laying out the tiles. The closer you get, the more detailed it becomes. But even from a distance, there is creativity in bloom.

This is what school is about. Where else would most of these kids have a chance to do a full mosaic art project like this? And what a gift to the school for years to come. Did I mention it is right outside my classroom?

This is a pretty amazing use of video technology by the team that continues to share out the late Jeff Buckley’s music. They have used Buckley’s cover of a Dylan song (Just Like a Woman), and made an interactive watching/listening experience for the viewer/listener — transforming the song and interpretation by Buckley into something magical. Not to mention with sexdecillion combinations (according to the producers .. I didn’t count).

They say:

All together there are over 16,000 different music combinations that can be created. The video contains 73 different animated cells that can be clicked or tapped to alter the story, adding up to a staggering number of possible visual and story combinations: approximately 1 sexdecillion. That’s a 1 followed by 51 zeros.

Throughout the song, you can click on small images which change the ‘story’ of the song, as Buckley’s amazing voice and single guitar guide you through, and then a few minutes in, they start sprinkling remix options, where choosing various paths add new layers to the track you are listening to at that moment. Strings get added or removed. A guitar run comes into play. Keyboards move up in the mix.

Wow.

I found myself deep inside Buckley’s voice here. I worried that the immersion in the video might distract me from the song and the singing. Maybe it is because I already know the song. Maybe it is because I already know Buckley’s voice. But the combination of listening and exploring combined for me into a satisfying experience all around.

And now the question that comes to my mind? How did they do it? I want to see a “behind the scenes” video of how this all came to be created? I want to learn about the process and wonder about how one might even venture forward this way? I wonder how this might be viewed and taught as ‘writing’ in the digital age.

(This is for the Slice of Life challenge for March, hosted by Two Writing Teachers. We are writing each day about the small moments in the larger perspective … or is that the larger perspective in the smaller moments? You write, too.)

My son recently got an interesting gift: a Minecraft Stopmotion Movie package. Actually, the box contained the props and then you download the app, and use a mobile device to shoot the stopmotion. He and a friend were working on a short flick this long weekend.

While you could do all this without the package, the backgrounds and plastic bricks and characters make for an easier experience. (Although oddly, the intro and outros are preset to be pretty long … sometimes longer than the movie itself, and I wonder if this is a nod to kids’ fascination with those elements of moviemaking).

They are still working on how to tell a story in stopmotion as opposed to moving characters around just to move characters around … the teacher in me can’t stand the randomness. But I know I need to just let them do what they do, and play and explore.

I’ve shown him how to move the video into iMovie, where he can do more editing and add music, etc, so that is the next real step. He already knows the basics there, so it is a rather seamless transition from filmmaker to editor.

(This is for the Slice of Life challenge for March, hosted by Two Writing Teachers. We are writing each day about the small moments in the larger perspective … or is that the larger perspective in the smaller moments? You write, too.)

We have a pretty solid house. It’s not going to fall down anytime soon (God willing). But the wind at 3 a.m. in the morning shook us at our very foundation. It didn’t last long, this wicked wind that came from nowhere, but the windows were rattling and the walls were moaning.

Eyes closed as I kept sleep close enough to fall back into, I could envision the world outside as the fury increased, the landscape rushing by on the gusts of the changing weather front. No doubt, it is winds like that which inspire writers to create strange winds of change in stories. I am reminded of Something Wicked This Way Comes for some reason. I don’t want to be.

It was that kind of wind. Not a kind breeze. But a gust that could move you into something strange and unknown. I huddled closer to the blanket.

The dog got up from one of the kids’ rooms, clicking his paws on the hardwood floor in the hallway. No doubt, he was wondering: what the heck was that? And then he disappeared again, finding comfort downstairs in his crate. He knows a thing or two.

So does the wind. I wonder, though, where that wicked wind went when it left us at 3 a.m. in the morning? Did it find you? Did it leave you with a story, too?

How will the crowd-annotation work? Many of us have been playing with the Hypothesis add-on tool for some time, and we find it has a lot of value for crowd-sourced annotation (along with some drawbacks around visibility). It allows you to layer on comments and media into the margins of the article. Whole conversations can unfold as another layer on the web.

But there are other ways to annotate — you could write a blog post about something you have read and share the link; you could use the Diigo bookmarking site, which also allows you to crowd-annotate articles within the Diigo environment and kicks out a shared link; or you might just want to remix articles in your own fashion. If you know anything about CLMOOC, you know you do what speaks to your own interests.

Or, if folks use the “CLMOOC” tag in Hypothesis, we can view all of our shared annotations together in one stream. Check out what I mean.

We are all part of the Annotation Nation now. Come join Terry and Joe and the rest of us. Make your voice heard, even if it is in the margins. You can use the #CLMOOC hashtag on Twitter or share in the CLMOOC G+ Community. Make a video. Create meme or GIF. Do what you want. Take part in the Make with Me live session on Google Hangout that Terry and Joe are planning for Tuesday night (tomorrow) at 7 p.m. EST.

(This is for the Slice of Life challenge for March, hosted by Two Writing Teachers. We are writing each day about the small moments in the larger perspective … or is that the larger perspective in the smaller moments? You write, too.)

After our Easter Sunday Church Service, in which I was asked to play a Greek hand drum on the anthem (even though I was upfront with the fact that I do not play the drums nor can I read drum music … we have a very inclusive and forgiving church .. I just kept to the beat, with a few extra rhythmic whacks now and then), I was home, playing around on my guitar with some open tuning.

As I played my guitar, I had this lingering sense of the flowers and a quiet thoughtfulness on my mind, and while the song here is not really an Easter song, not one of forgivingness or of unexpected possibilities or of belief, it is inspired by Easter morning. Funny how the Muse comes to us at odd angles.

(This is for the Slice of Life challenge for March, hosted by Two Writing Teachers. We are writing each day about the small moments in the larger perspective … or is that the larger perspective in the smaller moments? You write, too.)

I was out, alone, driving on some family errands, with the car stereo up sort of loud. It was a funky, bluesy, bluegrassy song by Shawn Mullins — a tune about a love gone bad, with bitter revenge and then terrible regret — and my head was bobbing up and down to the beat, even though my heart could not stomach the violent story Mullins was unfolding in my ears. My fingers were dancing on the steering wheel.

You know what I’m talking about, that sense in the car that it’s just you and your music. The world can wait. Your soundtrack is on and it won’t be denied.

I arrived at a four-way stop sign, with the song still midway to its conclusion, when I noticed a local cab opposite me. A woman, with long blond hair, was car dancing, too. Her head was going up and down. Her whole body was in movement. Her lips were moving to the lyrics of her song, and her dancing was in near complete sync to mine.

She looked up, and I looked over, and we both smiled in one of those social encounters that only last a mere second, and yet in that moment, we both were in complete tune to the same world, even if it was a different song. We were dancing partners on the streets of the city.

We didn’t even have to wave or anything as we rolled our portable motorized dance floors forward. Our eyes told of the connection. We locked in, danced. Then I took my song one way, and she took her song the other way, and we both just kept right on dancing our way into the day.

(This is for the Slice of Life challenge for March, hosted by Two Writing Teachers. We are writing each day about the small moments in the larger perspective … or is that the larger perspective in the smaller moments? You write, too.)

Friday mornings, we do our fluoride in the classroom. About half the kid grab their cups of stuff (the other half don’t participate) and, at this point in the year, I tell them to time themselves for a minute. They stare at the clock on the wall, in a sort of trance, watching the second hand tick the seconds away.

Interestingly, it is one of the few times they make note of the analog clock in the room.

In almost every other occasion other than fluoride time, when they have to pay attention to the minute mark, they squint at my active board for the small digital clock in the upper corner. Sometimes, they don’t notice that I have the board on “freeze” mode (so the screen stays frozen and I can work on my computer) and they become lost in time. I had one student yesterday, signing out for the bathroom, who kept looking back and forth from the screen to the wall clock, trying to figure out why they were not in sync.

On some mornings, like yesterday, right around 9 a.m., our wall clock sometimes … stops. Just pauses. Takes a break. It’s the building clock system adjusting to “real time,” I guess, but when it happens — when the hands of time come to a complete and full stop — all the swishing-spitting kids’ eyes bulge out, as if they can’t believe it. As if it hasn’t happen many Fridays before. They point with dramatic fingers at the clock, and try to get my attention. As if I can fix it.

I nod, as if knowingly, and say, “Well, I guess your teeth get a little extra protection this morning,” to which their reply is as predictable as mine: a shake of theirs head in a dramatic “nooooooooo” shake and then relief when the clock starts up again.

The more attuned kids have realized by now that the second wall clock in the room — the one I brought in from home, with a saxophone on it — may be “off time” a bit from the world of Time, give or take five minutes, but it never stops working. Therefore, it’s a much better device for fluoride. I think the other just like the idea of watching time stand still.

(This is for the Slice of Life challenge for March, hosted by Two Writing Teachers. We are writing each day about the small moments in the larger perspective … or is that the larger perspective in the smaller moments? You write, too.)

I’ve been reading, by chance, perhaps the most appropriate, and best, writer for an event like Slice of Life: Annie Dillard. Her new book of essays — In Abundance— is a collection of pieces from her various books and a few new ones thrown into the mix, but any reason to return to Tinker’s Creek with Dillard is well worth my time. Yours, too. She reminds us to see the world. Really see the world. To take notice. To be there, in the moment of nature.

So I went out into my backyard, with Annie on my mind after finishing up The Abundance, to see what I might see and notice, and make note of. Excuse me for this attempt to steal her style of writing. I’ll do my best.

Our fire pit has long been bruised. Before we arrived to reside in this house, someone — the former owner, we are told by neighbors, who watched with fascination on the event itself — took a sledgehammer to the fire pit, slicing off chunks of red brick. What’s left is still a place for fire, but it’s as if the brick are now reluctant at its task. Air comes in through gaps. Pieces are crumbling. Bricks keep getting smaller and smaller through the years. The New England winters take their toll. So do kids’ playing. I find pieces of the fire pit through the yard in summer, cursing as I avoid them with the mower. Someone used it as a baseball, probably, or part of the landscape of a rescue scene with Legos. I imagine one of these days, I will come outside and find in amazement that nothing is there where the pit was but some red dust, as if the whole of Mars had come for a visit, and maybe stayed for Smores and drinks. The place to build the fire will no longer be there. Just faint memories of nights under the stars, red embers in the fire pit.

I take out the compost to the bin, which sits beside the crumbling fire pit, and notice how winter slows down everything. Somewhere in there, the worms are in slumber. Hundreds, maybe thousands, of worms call this black bin their home. They’ve buried themselves deep. The rich, black compost is their thick blanket against the chill. Who could blame them? Our bed is still piled high with layers of blankets and we have the warmth of the house. The worms have very little. Only decomposed material. Soon, though, the worms will stir, and no doubt be hungry, and our melon rinds and banana peels, and coffee rinds and tea bags, will nourish them as a welcome to Spring. Some worms will end up in our garden, a mass relocation effort with the goal of food for our mouths, too. In this way, we and the worms eat together at the same table.

On the windward side of the fire pit, where it almost touches the compost bin, I notice two abandoned brown and striped husks dancing in the wind. They look like bugs, dead from winter, but they are not. They are what the bugs left behind. One little thread connects each to the brick wall, and it feels that if I were to touch them, they might fall. Maybe even fly, they seem so light and airy. I resist the boyhood temptation to crush the husks, even though it reminds me of the bubble air pouches that come in valuable deliveries. You unpack the valuables, fair enough, and first turn your attention to the bubble wrap. Pop. Pop. Pop. Can anyone really resist that popping? You make the air whoosh, snap, pop. It’s an unlikely Zen moment. I’m tempted, yet I resist the husks handing on the wall, although I do wonder who stayed in there last and where have they gone to now? Were they ugly bugs now made beautiful by change? Or were they beautiful to begin with? The husks just keep dangling, with no clue for me to discern.

I wander by the fence and notice the push mower. We only use this mower a few times each year, before the grass has really come in. Unlike our neighbors, we don’t use anything on the grass in our yard to help make it grow or be luxurious, so our backyard becomes the unexpected by early summer, with weeds and grasses and flowers and a wonderful wildness about it. The few tufts of grass clumps, and wild onions, that are first to emerge from the soil aren’t enough for the larger mower, but this push mower does the job. Come summer, the mower by the fence will be overgrown with vines and weeds, so that it becomes a sculpture of the wildness of the backyard. It will be nearly impossible to move, so strong are the plants holding it in place. Now, however, the mower seems naked, vulnerable even. The weeds of last summer have long died off. The snow has melted. The grass is still quite some time from growing. It waits, patient. I am not. I move on.

A flash of color catches my eye. One of the first flowers of winter, or spring, of whatever this in-between zone is that we find ourselves in these days. One day it is cold and the next day, warm, and none of us seems to really know what kind of jacket to wear in the morning. Will we be cold because we underdressed? Or warm because we overdressed? Make up your mind, Sun. This flower doesn’t seem to care one way or another, for it has forced its way up to the sun, and opened itself to the warmth of the world. It may not last long, this flower, resisting the last vestiges of winter. While it’s here, though, it teaches us of the beauty of reaching for the sun and of the possibilities of wonderful things happening all around us, if only you remember to pay attention.

(This is for the Slice of Life challenge for March, hosted by Two Writing Teachers. We are writing each day about the small moments in the larger perspective … or is that the larger perspective in the smaller moments? You write, too.)

Most days, our mailbox is a real snore. Not much mail and what there is is usually bills or advertisement stuffers. Or magazines. (Ok, so magazines are not boring and I do get a burst of excitement when a new magazine is delivered.)

I hold the postcards in my hand, read their writing and analyze their loops and swirls of words — the physical act of writing itself — and closely examine the artwork on the other side.

I’m looking form, and find, the essence of my friends in the postcards. I’m wondering what they were thinking as they composed the writing or art itself, and I appreciate the time they spent not just writing, but also mailing it out into the world. We can write an email or a text or a tweet in mere seconds and it disappears, without even really thinking about it. Just .. poof … it’s gone. But a postcard or a letter .. that requires more of your attention, and in that attention span, there is something to be said about friendship. You have to care in order to spend the time with the writing, however brief.

Yesterday, I received a postcard from my friend, Sarah, in Scotland, so the postcard came covered in Air Mail stickers, and inside was this beautiful postcard with some of her woven, knitted work, wishing me a Happy Easter. Good timing, Sarah! (Sarah once knitted me a hat and sent it to me from Scotland.)

And another postcard from Karen has arrived earlier. Hers referenced “Food as Art” — a theme that we were sort of exploring in yet another writing space in recent weeks. And on the back of the postcard, Karen wished me a pleasant Spring with friend and food and fire.